Definition

Style rule: the word “with” is italicized throughout the book wherever used as the book’s technical referent — hospitality as the shape life takes when lived well in relationship to living with others. Preserves the term’s weight across chapters and keeps the reader in constant low-grade contact with the Romantic Frame / Being-With thesis. Applies to all future drafts, not just the Intro.

Explanation

A single italicized word carrying a whole thesis is a deliberate typographic bet — the claim is that hospitality isn’t a service delivered to someone, it’s a way of being with them, and the book wants that distinction present on the page every time the word shows up, not just argued once and assumed from then on.

This is a formatting discipline in service of a content discipline. Without the italic, “with” reads as an ordinary preposition and the reader’s attention slides past it. With the italic, the word interrupts just enough to remind the reader that this isn’t incidental phrasing — it’s the Romantic Frame doing its work in the smallest possible unit of the sentence.